1. Field of The Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method of manufacturing spectacles (or eyeglasses) and to frame spectacles used therefor. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method of manufacturing spectacles, by which the omission of a frame shape measurement to be performed in a spectacle store (namely, an optician shop) is made possible.
2. Description of The Related Art
Generally, the manufacture of spectacles is accomplished by performing the following procedure so as to obtain spectacles. Namely, lens processing information required for the manufacture of spectacles is first obtained according to information which includes prescription values for the eyes of a spectacle (or eyeglass) wearer and frame shape information representing a spectacle frame selected by the wearer. Subsequently, the material of spectacle lenses is selected according to the aforesaid lens processing information and is then processed. Finally, the spectacle lenses obtained in this way are mounted to (or fitted into) the aforementioned spectacle frame.
Frame shape information is indispensable for this manufacture of spectacles. Further, it is one of the most important requirements for manufacturing comfortable spectacles that a processor (or a process manufacturer) accurately recognizes the frame shape information representing various shapes of spectacle frames.
In the case of performing a conventional method by which a processor knows this frame shape information, if the spectacle frame is a rimless frame or a partially (or partly) rimmed frame, a frame maker preliminarily supplies data, which represents two-dimensional plastic lens shape, to a spectacle manufacturer (for example, a spectacle store) as frame data, simultaneously with the shipment of the spectacle frame. Then, the spectacle manufacturer takes out a pattern (or a former) corresponding to the frame number of the spectacle frame chosen by a customer and further mounts the pattern on a lens processing machine (namely, an edger). Subsequently, the edging of lenses are carried out by performing the tracing (or copying or profiling) thereof.
The aforementioned conventional method using the pattern (or former), which are designated by the frame shape information representing spectacle frames, has a merits in that desired frame information can be easily obtained, in the case where the shapes of the spectacle frames are simple and the number of kinds of the shapes thereof is small and a manufacture error is small. However, in the case that the number of kinds of the spectacle frames has increased considerably and that there has been a rapid increase in the number of modifications of the shapes of the spectacle frames, it is obvious that there is a limit to the number of such patterns (or formers) which a spectacle manufacturer (or a process manufacturer) can retain, even if the manufacturer wishes to posses all of the formers respectively corresponding to the kinds of the shapes of the spectacle frames.
Thus, in recent years, an edger, which is a combination of a frame shape measuring apparatus (or unit) and a lens processing machine (or unit) in one (piece), has come into wide use. This edger is adapted so that the frame shape measuring unit measures (or obtains) frame shape information directly and actually and further transmits information representing a result of the actual measurement (namely, the actually obtained frame shape information) to the lens processing unit whereupon lenses are processed in a desired manner by using the combination of this frame shape information, lens information, prescription values, layout information and processing mode specification information or the like as lens processing information. This obviates the necessity of the patterns (or formers) as used in the conventional method. FIG. 14 illustrates an outline of the conventional spectacle manufacturing method. Incidentally, this figure illustrates both of the cases that the lens processing is performed in a spectacle store and that a processor (or a process manufacturer) is requested and processes lenses.
However, the aforementioned method using the edger has the following problems.
First, in the case of performing this method, it is necessary for obtaining frame shape information to set all of the spectacle frames, which are selected by customers, in the frame shape measuring apparatus individually and to perform the measurement of these frame shapes. However, certain measurement techniques and a measurement time having a certain length are necessary for such a measurement. Namely, to achieve an accurate measurement, there are required an operation of holding a spectacle frame on a measurement base, and the accuracy and speediness of operations. Further, generally, a system (or a method) employed by the frame shape measuring apparatus is a contact system by which a lens groove of the frame is traced by a measurement element (namely, a stylus) during the measurement element are kept pressed thereagainst. Thus, in some case, there is the necessity of taking a deformation of the frame, which is caused by a pressure at the time of such a measurement, into consideration. Moreover, there is a management control problem presented by considering the abrasion of the stylus. Furthermore, in the case that a spectacle store is crowded with customers, there is caused a problem that the processing takes time, because a plurality of operations cannot be performed at a time. Besides, even if the spectacle store or the processor possesses a plurality of edgers so as to prevent an occurrence of such a problem, there are caused problems in that the cost of equipment is huge and that it is very difficult to secure operators of the edgers and to manage and control the edgers.
The present invention is accomplished against the aforementioned background.